Angelus News | April 21, 2023 | Vol. 8 No
On the cover: Christ pulls Adam out of “limbo” while surrounded by other biblical figures in a late 13th-century painting (artist unknown). St. John Chrysostom famously wrote about Easter: “Forgiveness is risen from the grave.” But what does that mean for us? On Page 10, Mike Aquilina details how history, Scripture, and the experience of the apostles reveals forgiveness as the Resurrection’s most tangible result. On Page 14, Jennifer Hubbard recounts how her 6-year-old daughter’s murder in the Sandy Hook shooting led her on a journey to do the impossible.
On the cover: Christ pulls Adam out of “limbo” while surrounded by other biblical figures in a late 13th-century painting (artist unknown). St. John Chrysostom famously wrote about Easter: “Forgiveness is risen from the grave.” But what does that mean for us? On Page 10, Mike Aquilina details how history, Scripture, and the experience of the apostles reveals forgiveness as the Resurrection’s most tangible result. On Page 14, Jennifer Hubbard recounts how her 6-year-old daughter’s murder in the Sandy Hook shooting led her on a journey to do the impossible.
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Jennifer Hubbard with<br />
her daughter Catherine,<br />
in an undated photo.<br />
| CNS /COURTESY<br />
JENNIFER HUBBARD<br />
The currency of the heart<br />
In order to forgive after my daughter’s murder, God had to use Lent —<br />
and Easter — to show me what true surrender looks like.<br />
BY JENNIFER HUBBARD<br />
Day after day I would pray for<br />
justification.<br />
Actually, more than for<br />
justification, I would plead for what I<br />
considered the best solution. I thought<br />
when it was served, my restlessness<br />
would be satiated, and my heart<br />
would return to its stillness.<br />
My daughter Catherine was one<br />
of the first-graders lost in the Sandy<br />
Hook Elementary School tragedy in<br />
2012. She was 6 when she died.<br />
Slowly over time, without even realizing<br />
it, by focusing on how my hurt<br />
could be reconciled, I had become<br />
fixated on reliving what caused it in<br />
the first place. There was a debt that<br />
I felt needed to be repaid in full, and<br />
justification boils down to restitution:<br />
a fair and even exchange that repays<br />
a debt that is owed. But reality is<br />
different: There is no fair and even<br />
exchange when it comes to a matter of<br />
the heart.<br />
This quest for justification had grown<br />
like an invasive plant. Resentment,<br />
bitterness, and anger had taken root in<br />
my life. They affected my relationship<br />
with God: Prayers turned to pleading,<br />
resulting in the expectation that if I<br />
was loved, my solution would have<br />
been accepted, and my timeline met.<br />
When the response was silence and<br />
the whole atrocity seemingly justified,<br />
I reminded my heavenly Father of all I<br />
had done, how I was the one who was<br />
14 • ANGELUS • <strong>April</strong> <strong>21</strong>, <strong>2023</strong>
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